Introduction to the Special Issue Pluralism in Emergenc(i)es in the Middle East and North Africa

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-173
Author(s):  
Kristin Soraya Batmanghelichi ◽  
A. George Bajalia ◽  
Sami Al-Daghistani
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
International Development ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Capital Mobility ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
State Of Emergency ◽  
Disciplinary Boundaries ◽  
Refugees And Asylum Seekers

AbstractThe issue “Pluralisms in Emergenc(i)es” is a result of a two-conference series that took place in Amman and Tunis, in December 2017 and October 2018, respectively. Taking these two locations as historical epicenters of human, commodity, and capital mobility, in two connected regions, these conferences set out to interrogate the historical, social, and religious underpinnings of the migrant and refugee crisis in order to position this moment as a state of emergence, rather than a state of emergency. The focus of the essays included here explores pluralism as it has emerged in response to contemporary global crises, and asks a number of questions: What are the variations in how “pluralism” is understood, and how does it function in a time of crisis? What are the material and immaterial modes through which pluralism takes shape? Moreover, how does it change through the circulation of people - as migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers – and capital – whether under the auspices of international development funds, religious aid, or new labor markets? By crossing disciplinary boundaries, this special issue enters into a fundamental discussion about how “pluralism” is conceived across sites and offers new vistas for its conceptualization in North Africa and the Middle East.

scholarly journals Introduction to the Special Issue “Transnational care: Families confronting borders”

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 393-414
Author(s):  
Laura Merla ◽  
Majella Kilkey ◽  
Loretta Baldassar
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Family Relations ◽  
Transnational Families ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Transnational Family ◽  
Current Scenario ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Refugees And Asylum Seekers ◽  
Migration Regimes

In this article, we introduce the key themes of our Special Issue on "Transnational care: families confronting borders". Central to this collection is the question of how family relations and solidarities are impacted by the current scenario of closed borders and increasingly restrictive migration regimes. This question is examined more specifically through the lens of care dynamics within transnational families and their (re-)configurations across diverse contexts marked by "immobilizing regimes of migration". We begin by presenting a brief overview of key concepts in the transnational families and caregiving literature that provides a foundation for the diverse cases explored in the articles, including refugees and asylum seekers in Germany and Finland, Polish facing Brexit in the UK, Latin American migrants transiting through Mexico, and restrictionist drifts in migration policies in Australia, Belgium and the UK. Drawing on this rich work, we identify two policy tools; namely temporality and exclusion, which appear to be particularly salient features of immobilizing regimes of migration that significantly influence care-related mobilities. We conclude with a discussion of how immobilizing regimes are putting transnational family solidarities in crisis, including in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, gripping the globe at the time of writing.

Mediterranean geographies of protest

2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Fregonese
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Resistance Movements ◽  
State Security ◽  
European Cities ◽  
The Mediterranean

This special issue of Euro-commentaries tackles the question of what links unprecedented anti-regime uprisings in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, with the largest protests in decades in several European cities. Beyond the specificities of individual cases, uprisings on both sides of the Mediterranean have highlighted strong and often violent collisions between resistance movements and state security. How are these collisions reshaping urban and political geographies in the Mediterranean? The papers presented here explore different aspects of the 2011 protests, and share the view that these are shaped by concerns for social justice, human rights and democracy, which are not a prerogative of the Arab world, but indicate instead more complex geographies.

Human Mobility in the Middle East

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Zahra Babar
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Human Mobility ◽  
Internally Displaced Persons ◽  
Displaced Persons ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Annual Basis ◽  
Forced Migrants ◽  
Complex Patterns ◽  
Refugees And Asylum Seekers

Between the two poles of moving purely out of choice or moving because one has no other option but to leave, there are a variety of circumstances and nuanced motivations that lie somewhere in the middle. No matter what the personal or circumstantial drivers and reasons that propel it, migration on an annual basis occurs for millions of people. The term “migration” is itself used to describe varied and complex patterns of human mobility that occur internally within a state or region, as well as those taking place across borders, internationally, and trans-continentally. Migration can be applied to the categories of people moving as a result of their own agency, voluntarily, and as an individual or familial choice. It can also be used to describe the categories of those having to move by force or under duress, and this includes the mobility experiences of forced migrants, internally displaced persons, refugees, and asylum-seekers.

Hypocritical Inhospitality: The Global Refugee Crisis in the Light of History

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luke Glanville
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
European Union ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Union Member ◽  
The United States ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Member States ◽  
Refugees And Asylum Seekers ◽  
European Union Member States

AbstractOne of the justifications offered by European imperial powers for the violent conquest, subjection, and, often, slaughter of indigenous peoples in past centuries was those peoples’ violation of a duty of hospitality. Today, many of these same powers—including European Union member states and former settler colonies such as the United States and Australia—take increasingly extreme measures to avoid granting hospitality to refugees and asylum seekers. Put plainly, whereas the powerful once demanded hospitality from the vulnerable, they now deny it to them. This essay examines this hypocritical inhospitality of former centers of empire and former settler colonies and concludes that, given that certain states accrued vast wealth and territory from the European colonial project, which they justified in part by appeals to a duty of hospitality, these states are bound now to extend hospitality to vulnerable outsiders not simply as a matter of charity, but as justice and restitution for grave historical wrongs.

scholarly journals Introduction to “Reshaping the World: Rethinking Borders”

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 214
Author(s):  
Ernesto Castañeda
Keyword(s):  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Popular Sovereignty ◽  
Present System ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Relevant Research ◽  
Open Borders ◽  
The World ◽  
Immigrant Policies ◽  
Refugees And Asylum Seekers

This paper provides some historical context to understand border formations. By comprehending how our present system of borders and exclusions function, we can gain a new appreciation for migration. Moreover, it presents arguments for open borders to counter anti-immigrant policies, includes short summaries of relevant research, as well as for each article included in this Special Issue. Together, these articles show how more welcoming policies towards immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers do not threaten popular sovereignty but, conversely, strengthen both democracy and local rights.

scholarly journals Racializing Homophobia: Tracing Sexual Political Discourse within Europe’s “Refugee Crisis” in Berlin

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (Summer) ◽  
pp. 46-58
Author(s):  
Marlene Soulier
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Identity ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
German Nation ◽  
A Site ◽  
Refugees And Asylum Seekers

Discourses relating to gender and sexualities have long been a tool for the perpetuation of racialized “othering” and have contributed to the strengthening of national identities and boundaries as they reproduce binary constructions of “us” and “them.” As the German nation-state reinvents itself as multicultural, tolerant, and sexually liberated, these discourses serve to mark the racialized body as a site of backwardness, sexism, and homophobia, and thus justify its segregation and exclusion exemplified in the restrictive practices of housing, mobility restrictions, and deportation of asylum seekers and migrants. This paper aims to trace the unfolding of discourses in and between some dominant organizational structures in Berlin that advocate for LGBT refugees and asylum seekers. It argues that the claim for citizenship of some formerly excluded sexual others is contingent on the promotion of a very specific notion of sexual identity and participation in the orientalisation/ethnicisation of homophobia.

Mobility and Forced Displacement in the Middle East

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Population Movements ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Displaced People ◽  
Multidisciplinary Perspective ◽  
Refugees And Asylum Seekers ◽  
The Impact

The Middle East is currently facing one of its most critical migration challenges, as the region has become the simultaneous producer of and host to the world’s largest population of displaced people. As a result of ongoing conflicts, particularly in Syria, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen, there have been sharp increases in the numbers of the internally displaced, forced migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers. Despite the burgeoning degree of policy interest and heated public discourse on the impact of these refugees on European states, most of these dislocated populations are living within the borders of the Middle East.This volume is the outcome of a grants-based project to support in-depth, empirically based examinations of mobility and displacement within the Middle East and to gain a fuller understanding of the forms, causes, dimensions, patterns, and effects of migration, both voluntary and forced. As the following chapters in this volume will demonstrate, through this series of case studies we are seeking to broaden our understanding of the population movements that are seen in the Middle East and hope to emphasize that regional migration is a complex, widespread, and persistent phenomenon in the region, best studied from a multidisciplinary perspective. This volume explores the conditions, causes, and consequences of ongoing population displacements in the Middle East. In doing so, it also serves as a lens to better understand some of the profound social, economic, and political dynamics at work across the region.

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